Video Memories

If there's one thing I love doing, its taking pictures of my love ones, especially during special occasions, 

And another thing I've always enjoyed is having matching outfits with my family, or my friends.  Last new year's eve, I was able to do both, with the cooperation of my family, of course.

I really didn't know how I was going to show the pictures, or how I actually wanted to preserve or keep them.

I know there are a lot of applications that are being developed and I hoped there was something that would catch my attention.  Luckily, I found this new app, video memories.

With this app, you can choose between a regular video or a quick video designed for applications like Instagram that requires your posted video to be 15 seconds or less.

You can then choose the music you want to use, I had limited choices since I only have 5 songs on my phone's memory.

Next was choosing the background for the video.  You also have a choice of adding animation to your video or not.

At the end of it, you can opt to automatically share it on your social network or keep it in storage for upload later, or for your own use.

There are so many things that can still be done to your video, but this is a sample of a simple video for you.

  

Digital mini album

I just discovered a new feature of an app I've been using, instamag.

It now has a feature that makes you a music album with your photographs.

It's so easy, all you need to do is choose an album design and then choose the pictures, photographs that you want to see in it.

Here are some of the samples I made.

http://sg.api.fotoable.com/home/album/?key=9ccc7dabad7cb1b41c14ed3095e35754&id=14380959

http://sg.api.fotoable.com/home/album/?key=2bf7af6342d9cfc469d15df3b176d355&id=14383227

http://sg.api.fotoable.com/home/album/?key=f77f8ee2533fa4794d49ded1a2e49631&id=14383571

http://sg.api.fotoable.com/home/album/?key=f77f8ee2533fa4794d49ded1a2e49631&id=14383571

photo stories

I've been busy with the Christmas rush, so to speak.  More often than not, I choose to give unique gifts to family and friends during this season.

In 2011, I gave each of my friends a framed photo collage which I made for each of them.  And this year, I'm doing a calendar for the family, of course I'll be using their pictures to personalize each one.

Pictures do tell stories, you can choose photos which show us how our children have grown over the years.  You can also catalogue your family travels.

As much as I'd like to share some of the calendars I made, I'd have to ask permission from those I'm giving them to, or if not, I'll make a sample using my own photos.

Then I made a discovery.

I've only recently uncovered an application on my phone. It makes a story out of the photos you choose, say for a specific day.  The only thing you really do is choose the photos.  Of course you can always add captions and the like, but you can also keep it as simple as possible.

Here is a sample of what I did, and it only took me two minutes to do this.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/s/?view=att&th=151a632d6857f3e1&attid=0.1&disp=attd&safe=1&zw

See?  Can you imagine having done this in such little time?  Maybe you can check out your phone and see if there's an app that does this too.

Photo collage

Some find it easy, some find it hard.

Some like collage of pictures, which sometimes tells an entire story in just one page, while others prefer to have each picture separate from each other.

I used to make an album for each event or happening in my life and in the life of my children for my social networking sites.  It was a bit time consuming, and sometimes, I simply didn't have that many photos to actually make an album out of.

So thanks to photo collages, I only need to post one picture for something I found amusing, or funny or relevant.  For most people, it's easy to do, but then again, I'm doing this to help those who're not so good at it and actually want to try it out.

1.  Check out your apps store and choose an application.  Since I've been using FotoRUs lately, that's what I'll be showing you.

 

Once you've completed you download, open your app.

2.    Choose collage.  they have various layouts, depending on the number of photos you want to use for your collage.

3.  Choose the pictures from your device.  It really depends on what you want to share with other people.  or you can also just opt to save them to your device for printing.  Click next.

 

 

 

4.  Once you've chosen the pictures, you will see what the application has done for you.  If you want too see your pictures in a different layout, you can choose to do so from the options at the bottom.  Click next.

 

5.  It's now time to edit your collage.  You can opt to change the color of the background.

Add text.  You can also change the font type, size and color.

 

Then you can also add a sticker.  You have other options as to what to add to your collage.  You need to explore the options and choose what you want.

6.  You're almost done, click the check mark at the bottom.  Your collage will automatically be saved to your device.

 

 

7.  Share your collage.  You can choose to share your collage by clicking any of the networking sites, or you may store it for later, or printing.

You're done.

Here are some of the collages I've done over the years. 

https://sharalike.com/s/kp8y

Making a simple traditional scrapbook

Scrapbooking is a method for preserving personal and family history in the form of a book.  This "book" may contain photographs, artworks, clippings, decorations and even some tokens.

Here are some simple steps to follow in making your very first scrapbook.

1.  For what reason are you making a scrapbook.  Before you can begin to make a scrapbook, you first need to identify what you want your scrapbook to contain.

With the bunch of photos and memorabilia that you have, what would you want to make a story of?  is it an event, you family vacation, or your child's first experiences?

2.  Segregate everything you will use for your scrapbook.  Once you've decided on what you want for your scrapbook, separate all the photos and memorabilia you will use for your project.


3.  How do you want to preserve your memories.  Once you've decided on what you want to create, on the memory that you want to preserve in a scrapbook, you must then decide on how you will go about it.  you should choose a theme for it, depending on your topic, for example, you can choose your family vacation last summer.

Once you've chosen a theme, you can decide on the materials you will use.

4.   Choose your album type and size.  There are a variety of sizes available in the market nowadays.  when deciding on the type and size, take into consideration the number of photos, articles, and clippings.  Example, if you are making an album about your family vacation, you can also add maps or postcards.

Another consideration you must bear in mind is if you want your album to have a fixed number of pages or if you want to be able to add to it in the future.

 

5.  Plan your layout.  Once you're ready to begin with your project, plan how you want your photos will be presented by laying it out on your album, without sticking it permanently until you've found your perfect layout.

 

 6.  Begin creating each page.  With every page of your scrapbook, you need to plan your layout, with our example of your family vacation, you can do it by making pages per place that you visited, adding labels to each page.  you may trim pictures and choose to attach it depending on how you want to see them.

7.  Finish your scrapbook.  Of course this is all up to you.  You can choose to make an album for one vacation or you can add to it and name your scrapbook 2015 family vacations.  it would be easier to organize if you create a scrapbook like a storybook where each one is ended as another one begins.

Documenting memories

I can say I am fortunate to have a mother who loves taking pictures because I have a lot of photographs to look back on.  Considering the tie when I was born almost forty years ago, that was such a great effort on her part. 


Of course she kept all the photographs in albums where she wrote the dates on the back so I would know when they were taken. 

She kept snapping away as time passed by, this was something I got from her.  I love taking pictures and documenting events in my life.

Thanks to the technology, the cameras that needed film before you could use them was replaced by digital cameras.

There was also the emergence of video cameras which also needed tapes before.  They became digital as well over time.

Photos and videos are now stored in memory cards and your computer.  Of course as time went on, people hardly developed their photos anymore.  Instead, we just keep them in our hard drive or computers.  the same goes with our videos.

I am no expert but I'd like to share with you some of the methods I use when doing my own documentation.